In recent years, operation of wireless communication devices has increased significantly resulting in a corresponding increase of the demand for capacity in wireless communication networks to enable the devices to communicate as desired. In particular, the number of so-called Machine-to-Machine, M2M, communications has increased dramatically and will continue to do so for some time as more “intelligence” is introduced in various apparatus and environments. For example, various sensor functions are used extensively for remote surveillance and control of different apparatuses and equipment. Sensor devices and similar typically exchange information and messages with a central server, e.g. for delivering measurements and observations to the server and for receiving control messages and data from the server.
The term “connected devices” is commonly used in this field to denote any wireless devices which perform M2M communications frequently and automatically. In order to enable such extensive communication with a huge amount of wireless devices, including M2M devices as well as various mobile phones, smartphones and tablets, the M2M communications need to be executed with great efficiency in terms of, e.g., network bandwidth, computing power, memory capacity, battery consumption, to mention some illustrative examples. “Constrained networks” is also a term that is used to denote networks which attempt to minimize and/or optimize the above factors. M2M communications are often executed when the device is connected to a wireless access gateway using short range wireless technology based on, e.g., WiFi or Bluetooth, as opposed to radio communication over more extended distances such as in macro cells of a cellular network, and this description refers to such short range wireless communication.
A new standard has also been defined called Open Mobile Alliance Lightweight M2M, or OMA LWM2M for short, which is an efficient protocol for device management in M2M based networks. For example, the so-called Constrained Application Protocol, CoAP, can be used as a variant of Internet's well-known Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP, for M2M communication of data and messages to and from wireless devices.
OMA LWM2M defines three logical components as follows:                The LWM2M Server that manages LWM2M Clients or devices.        The LWM2M Client which is a machine device that contains various Objects with different Resources. It executes commands sent by the LWM2M Servers and reports resource information for device management and service enablement.        The LWM2M Bootstrap Server which is used during bootstrap procedures for initial configuration of the LWM2M Clients. This is useful when bootstrap is initiated by a LWM2M client having only a factory configuration.        
Four interfaces between these logical components are also defined in OMA LWM2M as follows:                Bootstrap: used by the LWM2M Bootstrap Server to set initial configurations on the LWM2M Client.        Client Registration: enables a LWM2M Client to register with one or more LWM2M servers after the above bootstrapping of the LWM2M Client.        Device Management and Service Enablement: allows the LWM2M Server to perform device management and M2M service enablement. Over this interface, the LWM2M Server can send operations to the LWM2M Client and get response of the operations from the LWM2M Client.        Information Reporting: this interface allows the LWM2M Client to report resource information to the LWM2M Server in the form of Notifications or the like. The Information Reporting can be triggered periodically or by events depending of the logic in the LWM2M client.        
In the following disclosure, the term “machine device” is used to represent any wireless device capable of performing an M2M communication in connection with a wireless access gateway using short range wireless technology based on, e.g., WiFi or Bluetooth. Further, a “wireless access gateway” denotes a point of wireless connection for the machine devices in the M2M communication.
However, there is currently no way of controlling how the machine devices connect to different wireless access gateways and a wireless access gateway is basically selected for a machine device either randomly by the machine device or manually by its user. As a result, the selected wireless access gateway may not be optimal for the machine device to use with respect to performance and network utilization. The above issues are particularly significant as the gateway used needs to be located fairly close to the machine device to enable short range communication, and the device therefore needs to change its connection from time to time e.g. when it is moved or when any wireless access gateways are moved, reconfigured or shut down, or when new ones are installed.